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In an online post entitled 'A Message to Our Customers about iPhone Batteries and Performance', the company said: "We’ve been hearing feedback from our customers about the way we handle performance for iPhones with older batteries and how we have communicated that process.

The Apple iPhone 6s (Image: AP)

"We know that some of you feel Apple has let you down. We apologize. There’s been a lot of misunderstanding about this issue, so we would like to clarify and let you know about some changes we’re making.

"First and foremost, we have never — and would never — do anything to intentionally shorten the life of any Apple product, or degrade the user experience to drive customer upgrades.

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"Our goal has always been to create products that our customers love, and making iPhones last as long as possible is an important part of that."

It then goes on to explain that batteries become less effective as they chemically age and their ability to hold a charge diminishes.

Apple iPhone 5 (Image: Matt Grayson/PA Wire)

The statement adds: "It should go without saying that we think sudden, unexpected shutdowns are unacceptable. We don’t want any of our users to lose a call, miss taking a picture or have any other part of their iPhone experience interrupted if we can avoid it.

"Over the course of this fall, we began to receive feedback from some users who were seeing slower performance in certain situations. Based on our experience, we initially thought this was due to a combination of two factors: a normal, temporary performance impact when upgrading the operating system as iPhone installs new software and updates apps, and minor bugs in the initial release which have since been fixed.

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"We now believe that another contributor to these user experiences is the continued chemical aging of the batteries in older iPhone 6 and iPhone 6s devices, many of which are still running on their original batteries."

It says that to address customer concerns, it is taking the following steps:

Reducing the price of an out-of-warranty iPhone battery replacement by $50 — from $79 to $29 — for anyone with an iPhone 6 or later whose battery needs to be replaced, starting in late January and available worldwide through December 2018;

Early in 2018, it will issue an iOS software update with new features that give users more visibility into the health of their iPhone’s battery, so they can see for themselves if its condition is affecting performance;

No specific UK prices have been revealed, but reducing a battery from $79 to $29 is equivalent to a reduction from £58 to £21.

The company says details about the battery replacement scheme will be provided soon on apple.com.

And to help customers learn more about iPhone’s rechargeable battery and the factors affecting its performance, Apple has also posted a new support article, iPhone Battery and Performance.